And so, farewell Summer Davos. I leave with a stack of business cards a yard high and the powerful conviction that I must return to Dalian soon. And not just for the wonderful seafood. To my mind there’s nothing better in the world than a clear steamed garoupa, some scallops from the bay, maybe a few drunken shrimp still wiggling on the chopsticks as you lift them out of the rice wine. Ah, the ticklish crunch of the first bite…. …Ok the last isn’t to everyone’s taste but you can’t get fresher than that, which is what seafood is all about.
Anyway, back to Dalian. Living in China, I am not supposed to react with impressed surprise when I discover a sparkling, well-ordered modern metropolis full of parks, wide avenues and happy citizens going about their lives under blue skies and benign summer sun. Naturally, the city polished itself up with alacrity for the Davos meeting. And I had been told repeatedly that it was pretty much the country’s model city, having had scads of central government money lavished on it when it had the rising political star (current Commerce Minister and likely to get another plum post in the coming Party Congress if gossip is right) Bo Xilai. Still, despite all that the city is quite a sight in the early Autumn sun, the port surrounded by a low ring of hills, its buildings distinguished by its remaining colonial architecture (courtesy of 50 years under the Japanese but that doesn’t get mentioned too much), Dalian sometimes looks a bit like Hong Kong, sometimes like Osaka.
The contrast is particularly stark when you think of other Chinese cities, the relentlessly industrial Yangtze Wuhan, say, or more intriguingly Wenzhou, where despite tons of private money produced by what are arguably the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, the place is at best undistinguished and in many other places a grimy dump. Dalian also recently scored a huge coup by getting Intel’s investment of $2.5 billion for a new wafer plant and has attracted other IT investment as well so that it now aims to become China Silicon Valley. OK, it’s not quite San Fransisco, but I’m definitely up with one elegantly suited delegate to the conference who was gaping at the huge, spanking new Expo center and muttered to his companion, “Do you think the rest of China looks like this, too?” “Not yet,” his Saville Row outfitted companion replied, “But give them time and money and god knows what they could do. Have you ever seen the Great wall?” Quite.